Greetings...The
CFN newsletter is back after an extended sabbatical. Henceforth it will
appear on an occasional basis, as enough naturalism-relevant material
accumulates to warrant your attention. It will sometimes include letters and
replies, plus guest editorials and articles - your contributions cordially
invited. We encourage you to
be in touch about any indications
that worldview naturalism (as distinct from, but allied with atheism,
humanism, skepticism and freethought) is taking hold. How is naturalism
being expressed or discovered, whether in religion, politics, economics,
social policy,
sustainability, the arts, or any other human enterprise? We also welcome
your input on how to present naturalism as a viable alternative to
supernaturalistic religions and worldviews, especially in meeting needs for solidarity and meaning. We want to reinforce all efforts to grow a
global community of worldview naturalists: those subscribing to a
comprehensive, positive naturalism that addresses the full range of human
concerns - cognitive, emotional, moral, practical, spiritual and aesthetic.
As always, your
comments and feedback are most
welcome. Enjoy! - TWC

The
Center for Naturalism, in collaboration with
Nirmukta, sponsored a
icon/logo design contest, and we’re very pleased with the results, one
example on your left, others
here,
here, and
here. Over 70 designers from around the world competed for a $350 prize,
paid in advance so contestants knew a winner would be picked. By the end of
the contest, 703 entries had been submitted, many of them very good; too bad
we could only pick one. The logo above includes an
icon – a simple bi-color spiral and sun motif – plus the tagline
Nature Is Enough. The icon and/or logo is intended for organizations or
individuals that want to promote naturalism, either primarily or
secondarily, so be in touch if
you’re interested in using it, or just download at will. The icon (for
instance the one that appears at the very beginning of this newsletter) can
appear along side or in combination with other text, so long as it includes
the word “naturalism” or the names of groups promoting naturalism, for
instance “Naturalism: Connection, Compassion, Control,” “Allies of
Naturalism,” “Richmond Reason and Naturalism Association,” “Naturalists of
Melbourne”, etc., etc. For some examples see the Facebook
naturalism group, Naturalism.Org
and the CFN home page. We
hope that the icon and logos – a common graphic identity - will help to
increase the visibility of naturalism and generate solidarity and purpose
among naturalism-promoting groups and individuals. If you're a naturalist,
please consider using them.

Meetups and the meaning of naturalism

When last counted there were
48 Meetup groups with over 7,500 members that list naturalism as a
focus, most being atheist, freethinker, humanist or rationalist groups.
Given that naturalism means different things to different folks, it isn’t
surprising that naturalism is (or was) also claimed as a focus by such
diverse groups as Arlington Tai Chi & Qi Gong Meetup, the Dublin Bindu
Center Tantra Group, the Chester County Holistic Wellness Meetup Group, and
The Raw Natural Path in Buckhorn, Ontario (“for those living
or interested in a Raw Food lifestyle or simply those who love nature”). To
disambiguate naturalism as a worldview, I recommend the simple phrase
“naturalism as opposed to supernaturalism.” People will immediately get what
you’re driving at and won’t confuse you with someone promoting tantra, whole
foods, or holistic or undressed life styles. Not that those aren’t
perfectly fine pursuits when kept consistent with science - admittedly a
tall order in some cases.

Although more can always be done to refine,
organize and apply worldview naturalism, and although it will never go
unchallenged, the basic elements are essentially in
place, about which see
here and here.
After 7 years in (very non-profit) business, CFN will therefore concentrate more
on outreach and networking to raise the visibility of naturalism, for
instance via the icon/logo, videos, podcasts and/or radio, a revised edition
of
Encountering Naturalism and other publications, and by any other
means or media - your suggestions welcome. If you're a naturalist with
skills in any of these domains and would like to participate in memeing
naturalism, don't hesitate to be in
touch. We of course welcome and encourage
donations - no
other organization does what we do.

Want to start a philosophy cafe?

I've stepped down as moderator of
the Philosophy Cafe at Harvard Book Stores (formerly the Davis Square
Philosophy Cafe), transferring operations to a committee that will pick
topics and moderators on a rotating basis. If you're interested in starting
a cafe in your location, let me know
since there's a good deal of material I can easily send your way: topic
titles and descriptions, suggested readings, and moderator's notes. Note
that worldview naturalism is not presupposed or advocated in most of the
topics or readings.

Free Will Roundup

Why the focus on free will at the Center for
Naturalism?

A word of explanation is in order about why free
will is so often the focus at CFN. It's simply because debates about free
will centrally involve human nature and human agency, matters of
considerable practical and existential importance. The naturalist doesn't
suppose human beings, complex and multi-talented though they are, transcend
causal laws and explanations in their behavior. The naturalist view is
therefore directly at odds with the widespread culturally-transmitted
assumption in the West that we possess supernatural souls or disembodied
mental agents with contra-causal free will. Human beings are widely believed
to be causally privileged over their surroundings, little first causes,
little gods: each of us has the power to have done otherwise in the exact
situation in which we didn't do otherwise. Since this assumption
expresses itself in our concepts of blame, credit, responsibility,
self-worth and deservingness, to challenge it has all sorts of
ramifications, personal, social and political. To my knowledge, CFN is the
only organization
that is drawing out and publicizing the progressive, humanistic implications
of the science-based denial of contra-causal free will. Until other
organizations get involved, we remain the only non-profit group advocating
no free will (NFW) enlightenment, of
freedom from free will. Which explains our emphasis on it here and
elsewhere at Naturalism.Org.

Leveraging Harris: making moral progress by denying free will

In his latest book, The Moral Landscape,
Sam Harris devotes 10 pages (pp. 102-112) to debunking contra-causal free
will and drawing out the progressive implications for our beliefs, attitudes
and social practices. This is a most welcome development since Harris
commands a wide readership and considerable respect (although by no means
universal agreement) among atheists, humanists, skeptics and freethinkers.
Such readers are among those most likely to be receptive to the thesis –
radical from the traditional dualistic religious perspective, but a
scientific commonplace – that we aren’t causal exceptions to nature...
Continued here.

Cris Evatt's 3rd Edition of The Myth of Free
Will

As the title suggests, Evatt's
newly expanded book is an unabashedly partisan take on the free will
debate that collects essays and quotes from those who strongly doubt that we
are uncaused causers. The format is folksy, most of entries are short and
non-technical, but the contributors are largely respected academics,
psychologists, philosophers and scientists. As a result, Evatt demonstrates
that her skepticism about (contra-causal) free will has plenty of informed
support (but note that this book is definitely
not for philosophers since it doesn't purport to present detailed,
rigorous argumentation). Since most of those quoted haven't gone terribly
public in denying free will - not a thesis to win you friends and admirers -
Evatt has rendered a great service in making these thoughts available to a
general, non-philosophical audience. Her running commentary along the way
keeps things lively and down to earth. Even better, from the CFN
perspective, she draws out the psychological and interpersonal benefits of
seeing that we are fully embedded in a
cause and effect world. The
last chapter is an entertaining account of her own NFW (no free will)
enlightenment, which seems to have made her more open, accepting and
compassionate. Skeptics might say that the causality could run the other
way, that liberals like Evatt gravitate towards a philosophy consistent with
their predilections. But that's OK since in Evatt's case the philosophy -
naturalism - has plenty of independent support coming from a scientific
understanding of what sorts of creatures we really are. If you want to
introduce someone to the practical and ethical advantages of questioning a
central myth of Western culture, give them this book.

Scientific skeptic speaks out

Writing for a special series
of "inaugural articles" for the National Academy of Sciences, biologist
Anthony R. Cashmore is refreshingly candid in denying we have libertarian or
contra-causal free will. He argues at length that his fellow biologists have
been too reticent in this regard: they should repudiate free will just as
vehemently and publicly as they repudiate vitalism. Even better, he draws
out the positive social consequences of questioning contra-causal agency...
Continued here.

Knights Templeton on quest for causa sui

The existence of free willis perhaps only second to the existence of God as a concern among
those who believe science threatens human meaning and values. Just as
scientific explanations of the origins of human beings obviate the necessity
of invoking a creator, so too scientific explanations of human behavior
obviate the necessity of invoking some special human capacity for choice
that transcends cause and effect. This is worrisome for those invested in
the idea that to be dignified, moral, and effective agents, we must
transcend natural laws in some respect... Continued
here.

Respecting privacy: why consciousness isn't even epiphenomenal.
Consciousness, in particular phenomenal, qualitative experiences like pain,
is not the sort of thing that can be seen, measured, weighed or otherwise
observed from an external perspective. Consciousness is arguably a
categorically private phenomenon, non-identical to its publicly observable
correlates. I develop the idea that consciousness and its correlates inhabit
two mutually non-interacting explanatory spaces, 1st person and 3rd
person, respectively. Since well-formulated 3rd person explanations of
behavior are restricted to public observables such as brains, bodies and
environments, private experiences such as pain are barred from playing a
role in such explanations. This constitutes a clean solution to the problem
of mental causation: consciousness and its physical correlates don't
causally interact since they are in different explanatory spaces. This means
that consciousness isn't epiphenomenal with respect to observable behavior:
a phenomenon can only be fairly described as epiphenomenal (causally inert
or inefficacious) with respect to another if they inhabit the same
explanatory space.

Briefly Noted

William S. Robinson's Your Brain and You

Philosopher William S. Robinson has
just publishedYour Brain and
You: What Neuroscience Means for Us. I haven't yet read it, but his
description sounds intriguing:

The things that make you you – your thoughts
and feelings, your hopes, your sense of self – depend on the workings of
your brain. But you don’t control these workings: in everyday life, you
don’t know what your brain is doing, and you don’t find out what you’re
going to think until your brain has made you think it.

When our brains give us thoughts like these, puzzlement and anxiety are
likely to result. In Your Brain and You: What Neuroscience Means for
Us, I clarify and solve several puzzles about how to think of
ourselves in light of what we have learned from neuroscience. I talk
about anxieties concerning selfhood and moral responsibility, and I
explain a set of attitudes toward ourselves that fit with both common
sense and the scientific view of what we are.

Skeptical review of two books on
naturalistic spirituality

Supernaturalist theist John Cottingham writes an interesting
review of Mark
Johnston’s Saving God and Andre Comte-Sponville’s The Book of
Atheist Spirituality (I've reviewed the latter very positively
here). Cottingham argues that, despite the hopes and claims of the two
naturalist authors, there has to be more than the natural world for genuine
spirituality and morality to exist. Morality, he says, requires a
supernatural authoritative basis beyond human convention, and because the
universe as science describes it is “decaying, gradually cooling, inevitably
running down,” naturalists are simply not entitled to such words as
“sacred,” “holy,” “grace” and “gift.”

He asks rhetorically “But the sense, powerfully articulated in both writers,
of the sacred, of the mystery and wonder of existence, of the power and
resonance of the moral ideals that call us to transcend ourselves, of the
supreme value of love and self-sacrifice — how much of this is really
independent of the liturgical and scriptural and sacramental culture which
nurtured them? And how much of it can be retained once that culture has been
dismantled?”

Religious naturalists would say quite a bit, although some of the language
would likely change in the absence of God (must we necessarily hold onto to
“holy” to count as spiritual?). But I think it would take some pretty fancy
footwork to convince Cottingham that
religious naturalism is
even a remote possibility. A good rebuttal of his skeptical assessment would
go a long way toward clarifying what it is religious naturalists believe, if
indeed there’s any consensus. Discussion among RNs goes on
here.

Correspondence

Fatalism vs. determinism

William writes:

Hello,
You will have to excuse me, I’m fairly new to philosophy and these
arguments. I read your paper on
fatalism, determinism,
and free will; I understand the concepts that you laid out in your
paper as well. What I have trouble fully grasping is your explanation of
determinism and its full implications. I am having a hard time drawing
the line between determinism and fatalism; you stated that the fatalist
believes that it doesn’t matter what one does, if one is supposed to die
at age of 30 getting hit by a car, this will happen no matter what the
person's action. On the other hand, how is this not determined? Is the
person not determined to believe this way, therefore making him careless
as to where he would get hit by the car? What I'm asking is, does
determinism give you the choice to decide your own future? Say, a
wealthy CEO living today, could he have ended up as an actor? Thanks in
advance.

Hi William,
You’re right that it’s likely determined (fully caused) whether or not
someone ends up with a belief in fatalism. If he does, that might make
him a more careless pedestrian or driver, since he believes that what he
does doesn’t make a difference in how events play out. But this belief is
mistaken. Human choices and behavior have just as much (if not more) an
effect on how things turn out as anything else. They are fully caused, but
they too have their effects, so what we do matters. Since we don’t know what
the future holds we must choose and act in ways that might bring about the
future we want. This is what “deciding your own future” means: going
through a choice process, say a process of deliberation, which plays a role
in how events unfold. That this process is fully caused doesn’t rob it
of causal power, which means that if you don’t deliberate, things might not
turn out as well. Could the CEO
have ended up an actor? Not if we live in a macro-deterministic universe in
which, given the past as it was, plus natural laws, there is only one
possible way things could have evolved (whether determinism is true on the
macro-scale is an open and hotly-debated question). But adding macro non-determinism
to the picture wouldn’t have given the CEO more control, much less
any kind of freedom worth wanting in deciding his future (see
here). It would only have inserted a random
element into the explanation of how he became a CEO, an explanation that
hinges a good deal on his deliberations and choices.

- Tom

The varieties of naturalism

Bruce writes:

Thanks so much for your book Encountering Naturalism, your
presentation "Naturalism: The Next Step for Humanists?", and your Center
For Naturalism and Naturalism.Org websites. You've helped clear up and
resolve a lot of nagging questions I've had over the years, and given me
a group or "ism" I feel comfortable being part of. Much appreciated.
As to "isms", I'm still unclear about the difference between
"Philosophical Naturalism," "Metaphysical Naturalism," and "Scientific
Naturalism." The 3 terms seem to come and go as they please during
discussions about Naturalism (in your talks and in various interviews at
the Center for Inquiry), leaving me a bit unsure of their definitions.
Would just the term Naturalism do, or are the adjectives necessary?

Bruce,

Thanks, and you’re right that we could all do better in being precise about varieties of
naturalism, a specialty of
John Shook over at the Center for
Inquiry. Here’s my take: Metaphysical naturalism is simply the claim
that the natural world is all that exists; there’s nothing non-natural or
supernatural, however one defines it (a matter of debate of course, see
here for
instance). You could also call this ontological naturalism, since
it's a claim about what sorts of things exist - an ontology. Philosophical naturalism is the meta-philosophical stance
that philosophy and science are non-compartmentalized collaborators in
investigating reality, such that philosophy alone, done from the armchair
without looking at the world empirically, doesn’t get us very far. Many
philosophers these days are naturalists in this sense, although again
there’s lots of debate about the meaning and viability of philosophical
naturalism. See
here for a very good
podcast on this, and I recommend Jack Ritchie’s Understanding Naturalism,
reviewed
here and
here, and De Caro
and Macarthur's
Naturalism in Question.
I’d say that
scientific
naturalism refers to metaphysical naturalism, where the adjective
“scientific” simply draws attention to the empirical, observational basis
for the claim that nature is all there is. As a scientific naturalist, I
take science as the most reliable means of justifying beliefs about what’s
real, and given this commitment I see no evidence that anything beyond nature exists.
Metaphysical naturalism thus becomes an empirical hypothesis about reality
that could conceivably be shown wrong (see
here
and here), so naturalists aren't being
dogmatic about that claim. You’ve probably also heard of methodological
naturalism, which is a fancy, and to my way of thinking, misleading name for
the scientific method. It's misleading because it suggests science presumes
naturalism in its method or its domain of investigation, which it doesn’t,
see
here for
instance. Finally, there’s worldview naturalism as advocated by the
Center for Naturalism, which builds upon and draws out the implications of
scientific, metaphysical naturalism in order to address the full range of
human concerns, cognitive, practical, psychological, ethical, and
existential. See
here and
here
for summaries of worldview naturalism.
Hope this helps! - Tom

Naturalism: The Next
Step for Humanists?- online video presentation about naturalism
for the Freethought Association of Western Michigan; works as a spoken
introduction to the philosophy and its implications.

Applied
Naturalism Group - a forum to explore the personal and social
applications of naturalism; membership by application.

Naturalism
Philosophy Forum - to facilitate the investigation of
scientific naturalism, its assumptions, structure, and logical implications;
open membership.

Flickers of Freedom - a free will/moral
agency blog with knowledgeable contributors on the leading edge of current
academic debates, replaces the estimable Garden of Forking Paths.

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